A new social networking site called foursquare that is part friend-finder, part city guide and part game is full of great uses for travel nurses. It works with your smart phone, but if you don’t have one you can text your location or use a laptop on wifi.

The way it works is pretty straight forward:

Are you somewhere cool? Then check in.
Are you somewhere new? Then check in.
Are you somewhere often? Then check in.
Are you somewhere popular? Then check in.
Are you somewhere late at night? Then check in.

Search for any of your Facebook friends or Twitter followers that are already on foursquare.

Invite any of your friends and followers who aren’t on foursquare to join. Or email your friends and ask them if they want to join.

Connect with your Facebook profile or Twitter account.

Set your privacy and sharing options.

foursquare use for travel nurses #1: Share where you are with your family and friends on the road

One of the fun things about being a travel nurse is the chance to share all the cool places you have gone with your non-traveling friends when you get back home. Why wait? With Foursquare they can get real time updates of what you are up to. You can even connect with your Facebook or Twitter account.

foursquare use for travel nurses #2: Get discounts at places you go a lot

More and more business like Starbucks are starting to offer discounts to foursquare users and even special customer status to “Mayors” so if there is somewhere you go a lot or brands you love be sure to check if they offer any deals to foursquarers.

foursquare use for travel nurses #3: Keep track of places you have gone

When you have an account on foursquare you get a Stats page and History page that track your badges, history and frequency, places you have been or discovered, most visited cities and your friends, plus more. This is a great way to keep track of places you have been in a city. It is a cool way to visually see how much you did while on assignment and remember places you want to go if you work in that town again. Or recommend places to friends who are going to be there.

If stats are your thing you may really like some of the more detailed ones you can see like:

Days checked in

Number of checkins

Avg checkins when out

% of checkins at new places

New places discovered

Distribution by day of week

Distribution by day

Top friends

Number of different friends you’ve checked in with

Most frequented venues

Number of different venues visited

Most frequented cities mayorships

foursquare use for travel nurses #4: Find the best places in a new town

Another major part foursquare is the ability to read and submit reviews of venues. So when you are in a new town you can see where your foursquare friends think are the best places in town. Plus you can join in the conversation too and add your own ratings. But if you want to review a location that’s not already in foursquare database, don’t fret it is a piece of cake for you to add it.

You can even follow brands like these on foursquare to find new places to check out:

foursquare use for travel nurses #5: Make an assignment to do list

Another feature that is cool for travel nurses is the “Add to To Do List” button that lets you easily create a list of places you want to visit in a city.

foursquare use for travel nurses #6: Get cool badges

Where you ever in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts? Do you remember how proud you where to get your merit badges? Well foursquare has something like that too, but the things you do to get them are a little more fun than Basketry (sorry if you like making baskets). At foursquare you get them for things like:

Swarm: 50+ people are also checked in here – it’s a foursquare flashmob!

Overshare: 10+ check-ins in 12 hours! Next up: tweeting that you unlocked this Overshare badge?

Crunked: That’s 4+ stops in one night for you!

School Night: Checking in after 3am on a school night? Well done!

Super Mayor: A special shoutout for holding down 10 mayorships at once

Collecting these and looking back at your stats could be a fun way to track what you have done, where you’ve gone and who you met over a year or two of traveling. Take a look and let us know what you think.

My name is Jeff Long. I’m the Marketing Manager at Medical Solutions, one of the leading travel nursing companies. I have never been a nurse and am not a recruiter. I have worked at Medical Solutions for four years and think it is a great company that has a lot to offer nurses and allied health professionals interested in a travel career. I do post just a small sampling of travel nursing jobs from Medical Solutions, but mostly I write about travel nursing. On this site you will not be recruited on this blog (unless you specifically inquire about traveling with Medical Solutions then I will forward your info to a Recruiter). I understand that you are reading and/or commenting on this blog purely for informational purposes and I want you to enjoy that experience My job is to help you meet your career goals by sharing information, advice and the benefits of travel nursing with you.

Answers to “Ask a Travel Nurse” questions are written by David Morrison, RN, a nurse with two decades of travel experience, and the author of the Travel Nurse’s Bible. His writings have been
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